Mugwort is a medicine and also a precious food. However, only Lang Son people can transform mugwort into a very special dish: Mugwort cake with sesame filling.
Mugwort cake is a traditional dish of the Tay and Nung people of Lang Son.
Mugwort cakes are often made during Qingming Festival, the occasion to celebrate the new rice crop. On normal days, mugwort cakes are sold at the countryside markets for 2,000 VND each.
Mugwort cake requires rice, not just any type of rice. If you want the cake to be fragrant and soft, you must choose upland sticky rice and not mix it with regular rice. The sugar used to dip the cake must be yellow rock sugar, sweet and without any grit. Mugwort must be young, fresh leaves.
To make mugwort cakeTo be delicious, you must choose young and fresh mugwort leaves.
Wash the mugwort leaves, put them in a pot to boil with ash water. To get good ash water, the Tay and Nung people choose clean ash, preferably bamboo ash or green bean shell ash. Clean ash is pressed into a sieve. People slowly pour water into the ash so that it can gradually soak in and then flow down into the basin. Mugwort leaves boiled in ash water will soften very quickly. After boiling, pour the mugwort leaves into a sieve, wash them many times to remove the ash water, pick out the fibers, squeeze out the water and then form into fist-sized handfuls. Then put them in a mortar and pound them.
The rice used to make the cake is washed and soaked in warm water for about 6-8 hours, then drained and put into a steamer to cook into sticky rice. During the steaming process, when it starts to steam, people often add more water (boiling water) to make the cake more sticky when pounded. When the sticky rice is cooked, it is pounded evenly in a stone mortar or wooden mortar with previously pounded mugwort leaves. The sticky rice must be pounded while it is still hot so that the cake will be soft, smooth and sticky.
Pounding the cake is the hardest part, so the strong men in the house must be mobilized. They have to pound continuously and evenly for about 15-20 minutes.
The filling is the secret to the delicious taste of the cake. The filling is made from roasted and crushed black sesame seeds mixed with rock sugar that has been melted on a hot stove and allowed to thicken.
After the sticky rice is pounded, mothers and grandmothers will quickly scoop it onto a tray to make cakes. The hot cakes are coated with a layer of wax (beeswax) to keep them shiny, flexible, fragrant and to prevent them from sticking together.
The woman's skillful hands mold soft, smooth cakes.
Although made from sticky rice, Banh Ngai is a vegetarian cake, but it is easy to eat, cool, not greasy. The cake has the fragrant, sticky smell of sticky rice, the taste of mugwort leaves, the sweetness of sugar and the fragrant smell of sesame seeds mixed together. Anyone who has eaten it once will not be able to forget the taste of this rustic cake.
In addition, mugwort cake also has the ability to cure some diseases because mugwort leaves (also known as wormwood leaves) have a bitter, spicy taste, slightly warm properties that have the effect of regulating blood, eliminating cold and dampness, stabilizing pregnancy, stopping bleeding...
CakeThe Tay and Nung ethnic people in Lang Son's "ai" is a traditional dish, often made on Qingming Festival and new rice celebrations.
All Tay and Nung women in Lang Son know how to make wormwood cakes, which is why wormwood cakes have become a traditional dish passed down from generation to generation and are an indispensable dish during the holidays of the Tay and Nung people.
